Donna's Blog: Writing to Heal
Exploring the Science of Emotion, Trauma, Health, and Healing
Thank you for joining me in my little corner of the web! I’m Donna Jackson Nakazawa, an award-winning science journalist and speaker passionate about exploring the intricate connections between neuroscience and human emotion. Over the years, my work has been dedicated to uncovering how our early life experiences shape our brains, bodies, and overall well-being. I’ve delved deep into the science of how trauma affects our health and how we can find pathways to healing.
I offer online courses that empower you to reframe your narratives and heal from past trauma through a powerful journaling process, based on the innovative, trauma-informed, mindful Neural Re-Narrating™ program I’ve taught at universities and behavioral health groups nationwide.
My newest book, The Adverse Childhood Experiences Guided Journal, a workbook that applies my writing-to-heal program through exercises and prompts, will give you the guidance and space to process painful thoughts, feelings and memories to bring you peace, healing, and hope.
Feel free to dig into my blog posts – past and present! If you find the information here insightful and valuable, I hope you will also join me on my Substack, Healing Together with Donna Jackson Nakazawa, where I aim to create a warm and welcoming space where we can further explore together the profound connections between our emotions, past experiences, and health. I will be sharing insights, stories, and science-based strategies, all grounded in the latest neuroscience research. For now, as I work on building an engaging and supportive community, all my articles and features will be FREE. I hope you’ll consider following and supporting my work as we build this meaningful space together.
My Online Courses
Your Healing Narrative
Write-to-Heal With Neural Re-NarratingTM
Breaking Free From Trauma
3-hour self-paced workshop
Available now!
Neuroscience-Based Writing Practices to Rewire Your Brain from Trauma
The trauma of your past can’t be undone, but you can take charge of how it affects you. This compassionate journal offers a safe space to help you process, heal, and reclaim your power.
Writing to Heal - Recent Blog Posts
- All Posts
- Angel and the Assassin
- Childhood Disrupted
- Chronic Illness
- holiday stress
- Neural Re-Narrating™️
- Subscribe
- The Adverse Childhood Experiences Guided Journal
- The Last Best Cure
- Unhealed trauma
- Writing to Heal
In 1994 the Women’s Health Initiative set out to do the largest study of the relationship between our state of mind — an optimistic state, or a pessimistic world view — and cardiovascular disease to date – on ninety-seven thousand women. These women, who were healthy at the start of the study, were followed...
“A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ,” John Steinbeck once wrote. Steinbeck’s words are more true than we might ever have imagined. The neuroscience I unveil in The Last Best Cure shows how our state of mind dictates the state and health of our cells. When we are psychologically...
… that I need to make sure to tell you what she had to say when she read an early copy of The Last Best Cure. When I finished writing The Last Best Cure I asked my friend P., who is a well-known neuroscientist, to read the manuscript and make certain I had every...
There is a big moment in every author’s life, and it happens only once, with each book we publish. Today my friendly UPS guy knocked on the front door and smiled as he handed me a package. I peered at the return label and saw my publisher’s address: 375 Hudson Street, Hudson Street Press....
Today’s post is something of a P.S. to yesterday’s. When I was growing up, my Dad had a saying: “Let’s make a memory.” He’d say it right before he’d take us off on some impromptu adventure, like sailing out from our creek into the Chesapeake Bay on a Friday evening, so we could spend...
A few days ago, Katrina Kenison’s new book, Magical Journey: An Apprenticeship in Contentment, hit stores. (She’s also the author of another magical book, The Gift of an Ordinary Day.) I just picked up my copy and can’t wait to delve in, especially after reading the excerpt she’s posted on her website. Kenison speaks...
It happened again yesterday. I had a cup of tea with a friend of mine. I’ll call her Gail — a fifty-ish-year-old woman with soft blue eyes, cropped auburn hair and black-rimmed glasses. I hadn’t seen Gail in a while; she’s been struggling with Crohn’s for some time. She told me of how she’d...
In an earlier post I talked about how the numbers of Americans with chronic conditions has been escalating so fast it’s frightening. We may tend to brush these sorts of statistics aside, telling ourselves we’re sicker simply because we’re living so much longer. But a new study tells us that’s not the case. Americans...
